Dear Angela Eagle,
Re: Digital Identity and the English Constitution
I write as your constituent with grave concern about the Government’s proposal for a compulsory Digital Identity scheme. The issue is not merely administrative convenience, nor even immigration control. It is whether the people of this country remain governed by the rule of law, or whether arbitrary power shall become the new norm.
The rule of law requires that liberty is the presumption and restraint the exception. A universal biometric register inverts this principle. It would treat all citizens as suspects, compelling them to prove themselves to the state at each turn. Such compulsion is government by power, not by law.
Parliament has already provided extensive powers:
- Immigration Act 1971 – foundation of entry, stay, and removal powers.
- Illegal Migration Act 2023 – excludes asylum claims via irregular routes.
- Safety of Rwanda Act 2024 – authorises offshore processing.
- Border Security, Asylum & Immigration Bill 2025 – strengthens enforcement and liability.
The defect lies in administration and resourcing, not in legislation. To impose biometric surveillance upon 67 million Britons because government fails to enforce the laws it already holds is wholly disproportionate.
Human Rights and Data Protection
- Article 8 ECHR (HRA 1998): guarantees respect for private life.
- S and Marper v UK (2008): retention of innocent DNA unlawful.
- Bridges v South Wales Police (2020): live facial recognition disproportionate.
- UK GDPR requires:
- Art. 5 – data minimisation.
- Art. 7 – freely given consent.
- Arts. 9–10 – strict limits on biometrics as special category data.
A compulsory ID register cannot meet these tests.
Equality and Children’s Rights
- Equality Act 2010, s.19: a digital-only requirement is indirect discrimination, disproportionately burdening older citizens, disabled people, and minority ethnic groups.
- Children’s rights: protected by Article 16 UNCRC and Article 8 ECHR. The ICO has reprimanded schools for mishandling pupils’ biometrics. Extending compulsory ID to minors would multiply these breaches across the nation.
Our constitutional inheritance rests upon the liberty of the subject:
- Magna Carta (1215): no free man treated as suspect by default.
- Bill of Rights (1689): forbids arbitrary executive power.
- Protection of Freedoms Act (2012): required deletion of innocent DNA.
As Dicey observed, the English constitution rests not on abstract declarations but on entrenched habits of legality. A Digital ID would establish the opposite habit — surveillance by default.
Biometric Property – The Paradox
English law already treats aspects of the body as property:
- Yearworth v North Bristol NHS Trust (2009): sperm samples recognised as property.
- Trade Marks Act 1994: permits registration of DNA or fingerprint logos.
- Copyright law: protects caricatures of faces as property.
Yet the state denies that a person’s real fingerprint, DNA, or facial template is their property when it wishes to seize and use them. It is incoherent that I may own a cartoon of my face, but not my face itself.
Parliament should legislate for a data trust framework, recognising biometric and genetic data as the property of the individual, with the state acting only as trustee, subject to fiduciary duties and judicial oversight.
Evidence shows that Digital ID, once created, will not remain confined to immigration:
- The Online Safety Act 2023 embeds ID checks into online platforms.
- The NHS App increasingly serves as a health gateway.
- FCA KYC rules point towards mandatory ID in banking.
The spread from border control to health, finance, and political participation is not speculative — it is inevitable.
The liberties of the people of this country are not recent inventions but the inheritance of an indigenous population whose traditions of self-government stretch back through Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights to the present day.
The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007), while not binding, is persuasive. It affirms:
- Article 3: the right to self-determination;
- Article 8: protection from forced assimilation;
- Article 31: control of cultural identity and genetic resources.
To compel every Briton to enrol in a Digital ID regime is to assimilate the people of this country into a global identity system, contrary to both our constitutional tradition and persuasive international principle.
The World Economic Forum openly advocates interoperable digital identity systems (Reimagining Digital ID, 2023; Connected Future Initiative, 2025). Once built, a UK Digital ID would not remain sovereign. It would align with such global frameworks, diminishing the independence of Parliament and the liberties of the subject.
Citizens retain:
- Complaint to the ICO (Art. 77 UK GDPR).
- Judicial remedy in the courts (Art. 79).
- Compensation for material and non-material damage (Art. 82).
- Judicial review for disproportionality, failure to meet the Public Sector Equality Duty, or breach of the doctrine of legality.
But remedies after the fact are no substitute for restraint at the outset.
The Digital Identity proposal is:
- Unnecessary – immigration law already suffices.
- Unconstitutional – it reverses the presumption of liberty.
- Unlawful – under GDPR, the DPA 2018, and the HRA 1998.
- Discriminatory – contrary to the Equality Act 2010.
- Expropriatory – treating biometric identity as state property.
- Internationally inconsistent – with ICCPR, UN privacy resolutions, and persuasive UNDRIP principles.
- Externally driven – shaped by unelected international bodies.
It represents a constitutional rupture: the substitution of surveillance for liberty, of arbitrary control for the rule of law.
I therefore urge you to oppose this measure in Parliament and to uphold the principle that in England, liberty remains the rule, restraint the exception, and identity the property of the people — not the state, and not unelected foreign bodies.
Yours faithfully,
Name, address and postcode *
*note that without your name, and address to prove you are their constituent, your MP will reject this
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